


looking up from underneath

by cara_chiuling



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cara_chiuling/pseuds/cara_chiuling
Summary: Immediately after the final battle, Orm reflects.





	looking up from underneath

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr at ormdiana to scream about aquaman and our fave fishboys :) title from the song 'Never Let Me Go' by Florence + The Machine.

The chief emotion Orm felt, when Arthur and Atlanna were out of sight, was relief.  
  
What a strange and untethered thing to descend upon him so suddenly. He let it wash over him, and was surprised when it stayed. Anger didn't come immediately—another surprise.  
  
The soldiers who minutes earlier had been loyal to him escorted him from the scene of Arthur's victory, into the lead battleship. To the brig, a place for prisoners of war, or battle traitors and cowards. He was none of those, and didn't quite know what to do with himself inside the space.  
  
He watched as the doors slid shut, then turned to the interior. White walls and a square space too small to move around in. He was alive and uninjured, save some superficial bruises, and for a moment he didn't know what to do.  
  
His first thought was to strategize, positioning himself against whatever Arthur would do next: but Arthur didn't really seem the vengeful type. Then again, he might change his mind. Deposed kings had to watch their backs. _But Mother wouldn't allow_ —His thoughts blurred together and his throat tightened. Orm sat on the bench, breathed in deeply, and looked stoically ahead.  
  
Atlanna's— _Mother's_ —face entered his mind. He clenched his jaw, a gut reaction that he couldn't help even if he had wanted to. He knew how much it mattered that he deal with the fallout of his defeat well. There was still a way up after all this; he could turn it to his advantage somehow. He had to bide his time. He still had his mind and his dignity, and the support of some Atlanteans...  
  
A hint of disgust coursed through him at his own grasping tendencies. Wasn't it enough that he had fought, and been defeated, and passed on the crown of Atlantis honorably? Wasn't it enough that Mother was home? He had been powerless before and seethed and strategized out of it—but he didn't know anymore. The fire that had propelled him forward for so long felt dim.  
  
He could hardly bear to think about her. She was the one thing he had never expected. The one face that could turn all his rock-hard resolve into grains of sand, dissolved as in water. For a moment, seeing her, he had questioned the possibility of resurrection.  
  
Now, if Orvax were alive—he would've deserved death again, Orm thought, anger spiking. He would've delivered that death himself. And he would've thought as he choked the life from his father's neck: this is for the boy who loved his mother more than anything, this is for the child who didn't know about the sacrifice to the Trench until it was too late, this is for the prince whose only remaining parent and example was a cruel warlord, this is for the king whose rage poured out of him endlessly because there had never been any consolation.  
  
He felt the ship begin to move—back to Atlantis, most likely. He forced himself to relax, move on from thoughts of murdering his father. Orvax had died after battle, bleeding out from a trident wound  to the side despite the best medical attention possible—and Orm, a young warrior, had watched by his side, unfazed at the gore. Bone and muscle showed.  
  
They should've cut out the heart from him, if he had one, Orm thought. A violent death for a violent king. But all those years ago he had been content with him just being gone, and getting the crown, and planning to change Atlantis for the better.  
  
And he _had_ turned Atlantis into a better place. And this is what that got him? —Bitter thoughts for a bitter place, everything churning within him, and he wanted to control it but he couldn't find the willpower to contain it all.  
  
He wanted—needed—to speak to Mother, but he doubted that he could keep his composure, and that angered him. He needed time, first, to find a new path forward, a new version of Orm Marius that could withstand all the challenges that awaited him. Especially just _facing_ her. How would Arthur speak of him to her? Unfavorably, even though they were equally her sons? He needed the chance to set her right about him—he had loved her and missed her and raised Atlantis to a higher place for her—surely she would see that.

And Arthur—good king or bad—would never escape comparison from the king he deposed. Orm promised himself, in the quiet of the brig, that this fiery trial before him would not undo him. He would face his family with his pride intact. He would make something from the chances before him.  
  
In time, he would rise up again, and neither Arthur nor Atlanna nor any of the people of the free ocean would be able to deny that Orm was master—if not of the ocean, then of himself at least.


End file.
